


if everybody wants you, why isn't anybody calling?

by MourningPluto



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Crossdressing, Humanstuck, M/M, Weird Time Shit, actual hand action, actual mouth action, crossdressing fetishized, sollux POV, the 1980s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:45:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MourningPluto/pseuds/MourningPluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nobody wants him. you don't want him. his presence nevertheless permeates this bar you've been forced to call home, because you were stupid enough to hire him, so in that sense you really had it coming. eridan ampora is the most flaming bitch you've ever met, and technically this is all your fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if everybody wants you, why isn't anybody calling?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isangelical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isangelical/gifts).



You’d never tell your friends about him. 

But to be fair, you don’t have friends.

Friends are liabilities but more urgently, they’re just hard to keep track of – and to be honest, the few you can remember having seem to have royally fucked up in some way or another, so in your opinion it’s hardly worth it to track them down. To put it simply: in high school you only really ran with Karkat and Terezi – smitten fuckers with nasty attitudes – and Gamzee, who no one actually liked or disliked one way or the other. You know for a fact Karkat and Terezi got hitched right of high school, and to your knowledge they’re a couple of little yuppie fuckers, if the billboards are any indication. Vantas and Pyrope: Attorneys at Law.

Gamzee might be in prison. You aren’t sure.

Your friends are all fuckers, or were, and you aren’t really sure where to draw the line because you think it’s cheating calling those people your friends since you haven’t spoken to any of them in years, probably, maybe even a full decade. This prompts you to take a contemplative, if slightly nostalgic, drag of your cigarette. You close your eyes as you try not to cough, and when you look up, he’s standing in your doorway, breathing your polluted air like the greedy bitch he is. 

You don’t have friends, but if you did, you wouldn’t tell them about him. 

+++

You don’t usually take the drag queens because the drag queens are almost always objectively terrible, and unlike the girls who are objectively terrible, they don’t offer to suck your dick – an offer you never accept, but still enjoy hearing, because sometimes through these offers you are able to pretend that a squadron of vaguely attractive women are dying to fellate you. In actuality they’re just trying damn-near anything to get on the stage of the Black Lagoon, which through a series of events each more filthy than the one preceding it, you have ended up managing. 

Some of the dancers are better than others, of course, and it’s not like you’re one of the dance bars that accepts any old bitch who can walk on a pair of stilettos without breaking her ankle. You are also not one of the “dance” bars – no, your dancers are the kind of ladies who dance for entertainment, instead of the kind who…well, don’t. 

You weren’t expecting this one to burst into your office, reeking of something sticky-sweet and some imitation Coco-Chanel chicanery. See, you have an agent who deals with those types of people; Baby Janes and women with attitude and hell, even this creature in ten-inch pumps and tulle, they’re all fielded by your agent, who tells them in no uncertain terms to go ahead and fuck right off. Anyone actually good is sent to your office where you draw up a contract, which none of them ever read before signing.

Occasionally you do have a woman come in to make aforementioned offers of the sexual variety, and this had been what you were expecting when you heard the doorknob twist. You’d been expecting some dolled-up diva, some pretty thing smelling like the scalpel with just a dash of too-much-fucking-hairspray. You did not get this. 

What you got was Eridan. 

You surprised yourself by asking if he had an appointment, a pretty ridiculous suggestion for someone of your income level. Your office? Not actually an office, so much as a barely-lit space where you’re allowed to breathe air that doesn’t make your blood-alcohol-content spike up a decimal point or two in the span of five minutes. It has a desk. It has one (1) fluorescent light, which barely functions and nevertheless draws in quite the impressive display of insects of all kinds. There’s a little couch in the corner that makes the whole place look a lot sleazier than it really is, as if you’d do anything on it other than rub your temples and pass out there when the trip to your apartment is just too damn insurmountable. It’s your migraine couch, but you see people look at it and they immediately think it’s for fucking your dancers. Disgusting. Everyone’s disgusting. 

You’re no exception.

One look at you and it ought to have been obvious – your baggy eyes and required-reading glasses and thrift store suit simply do not give off the impression that you take appointments. You still don’t know what drove you to ask him. Maybe it was his air of importance; you saw him bolster and you bolstered right back.

God, you don’t know. Didn’t know. Don’t know.

“Don’t need one,” he’d said.

“You think you’re better than me?”

He’d looked at you reproachfully. “Think it?” Another look – this one sweeping, taking in everything from your hair to your hands and seeing all the mistakes. “I know it.” 

It took you a few minutes to find your place again – you felt, in fact, like you were falling or something. Usually words came to you pretty quickly, but suddenly they’d abandoned you, all in favor of some random drag queen with striking azure eyes that seemed to take in far too much. You’d considered yourself intelligent, fancied yourself smarter than your peers and maybe everyone, but in the presence of this _person_ you’d been reduced to stricken silence.

“Your agent told me I’m no good. That’s bullshit. You’re gonna put me on your fuckin’ stage, because I’m _talented _, and that’s about it.” He pointed a finger at you, and you’d half expected the his neon-violet acrylic claws to rip your eyes out.__

__“My agent is supposed to weed out _undesirables_ ,” you told him, not lying, “and even if there’s some kind of talent hiding under all of that make-up, there’s stricter rules set for dancers who miss spots shaving.”_ _

__For a split second he looked hurt, and you’d felt something resembling thrilled for the first time in a long time. Maybe even years._ _

__“Your agent is an idiot,” he said – stated it like a damn fact, like the fact that he said it made it true. “I’m talented. I’ll prove it.”_ _

__You knew, of course, what he was waiting for. It would be impossible not to. And soon, it struck you. Through the paper-thin walls of your office came blaring the music belonging to another dancer; Talk Dirty To Me, you recognized immediately, and from the look of him he might have been waiting for that song exactly._ _

__You’d been hoping for awful, for some kind of trainwreck. You’d been praying for a disaster, a funny story to tell your friends. You’d been hoping for hopeless, but that had simply been too much._ _

__Because he was right._ _

__Your agent was an idiot._ _

__And also, the son of a bitch had talent._ _

__He was coordinated, which always goes a long damn way – he didn’t dance like a stripper, as many of your dancers do, but like someone who’d taken classes, if there are even classes for that kind of thing. He’d danced like someone capable of feeling the beat of the music in lieu of their own heartbeat, and you hated him for it on impulse._ _

__It’s not like you’d never had queens, you rationalized. Of course not._ _

__And he was _good._ _ _

__You made sure to stand up, to act uninterested, to usher him out the door and mention almost as an aside that okay, he had the job, he started Monday, and perhaps most irritating was how he turned around to tell you –_ _

__“I told you so.”_ _

__Which he sort of did, to be fair._ _

__+++_ _

__You don’t set down your cigarette, but you pull it down and away from your lips. Eridan’s stupid enough to shut the door behind him, to walk right up to you and slam his hands on his desk, and you blow smoke in his face the way you know he hates._ _

__Though he’s capable of creating the illusion of beauty, with all that stuff he puts on his eyes, with that whore-pink shit he smears on his lips – though he’s certainly capable, in your personal opinion he’s the most beautiful when he’s gagging and coughing on your cigarette smoke; recoiling, eyes squinting shut and nose scrunching up._ _

__“Fucker,” he hisses, and you feel yourself smile._ _

__“Need me to close up?” you ask. You realize you might be mocking him a little, even though your words are pretty much innocent. Can’t really help it. Unless it’s a pay-day, there’s not much of a conceivable reason for Eridan to stick around this late. As a matter of fact, he’s usually among the first out the door, which leads you to find his presence…intriguing, certainly, among other things._ _

__You find yourself admiring the way he looks pallid underneath the fluorescent, nearly-dead ceiling lamp. It washes him out. It turns you on, a little. With all his zeal for perfection, Eridan makes flawed into fuckable._ _

__“Nah, Dam did it,” he tells you, no longer touching your filthy desk with his equally filthy hands. You find that hard to believe – Damara pretends not to speak English unless you’re ripping her off, and would probably pretend not to understand the language of a key going in a keyhole if it meant getting out of work – but assuming Eridan is correct, it leaves just the two of you, just shy of three am, and all things considered you decide you’re alright with that._ _

__“Dam, huh?”_ _

__“Mhm,” he tells you, but you know he’s not listening. From the purse he keeps on a chain wrapped around him, he’s retrieved the compact and a shade of lipstick you’re ashamed to recognize as Max Factor Mulberry._ _

__You know him so well. Your stomach lurches at the thought._ _

__“For fuck’s sake, your makeup is fine. It’s just you and me. What, are you planning on hitting the town? This time of night?” Of course, you know he’s not – it’s just that, even after all this time, you’ve simply got to check._ _

__“Yeah, right, I’m so sure,” he says back, and when he’s done smearing it across his lips it goes back in its hidey-hole. “Can’t imagine there’s anywhere else I’d rather be.” He smiles, and you’re reminded vaguely of a shark. He’s very sharklike, you suppose, if a shark wore purple-fluffy-things that are an absolute bitch to move out of the way._ _

__You can keep playing, of course. Sometimes you aren’t in the mood for fucking around – in any sense – but tonight you’re more than okay with playing his reindeer games._ _

__“Why don’t you sit?”_ _

__He looks at you like he wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise._ _

__“Sure, okay,” he says. “I mean, if you want.”_ _

__Some things about him are feminine – you’re almost, _almost_ reminded of a female, the way he sits on your filthy fuck couch and makes sure the fluffy bullshit part of his dress fluffs out in just the right way. _ _

__If there was any doubt about the possibility of you getting under his skin and – more pertinently – under that dress, he kicks off his heels, and he _stares_ , and that is when you stand, feeling as if you ought to address this particular problem properly._ _

__+++_ _

__You hadn’t even gotten his name until his first day of work._ _

__For someone so breathtakingly obnoxious, it had been a little bit of a shock – and maybe he had said his name, but he wasted no time in telling it again to everyone with a functioning set of ears. Might you have forgotten? No, not likely – you’d think you’d remember a name so very capable of making the hairs on your neck stand up straight, which his did and still does._ _

___Eridan._ _ _

__You shuddered. Who wouldn’t?_ _

__He raked in crazy tips, stupid crazy, because you found out quickly that while he was a drag queen beyond doubt, he was also good at working a crowd. While he’d been nothing but terrible to you, with the inebriated masses taking occupancy in barstools or booths you soon witnessed him being…cordial._ _

__You even confronted him about it, for some reason, as if you would care. It took fifteen minutes of playing dumb for him to even acknowledge your bitching._ _

__Finally you asked him –_ _

__“Why are you nice to them?”_ _

__He looked at you like you were absurd. “They pay me more, Sollux.”_ _

__+++_ _

__Tonight he tastes like martinis._ _

__“Classy,” you tell him – you actually kind of whisper it into his ear, which wouldn’t be quite so accessible if he weren’t baring his neck for you. You suspect his tolerance for the bruises you leave there has a lot to do with the fact that he likes people knowing that he has a lot of sex._ _

__“What?”_ _

__“Olives,” you say back. “Christ, Eridan, did you bathe in the stuff or what? Even your goddamn skin tastes like fucking martini.”_ _

__“Well, excuse me for giving you money. Greedy bastard.” His hands are in your hair, and his grip tightens ever so slightly, which for you is merely uncomfortable and not something to come your pants over._ _

__“Dumb bitch.”_ _

__You wouldn’t be quite so derogatory if it didn’t get him so hard. After all, you do like him, for the time being. He’s tolerable like this – but only if you can get him to stop ruining your nice moment with talk, so you decide to lead by example and go back to leaving him publicity-hickeys so the whole damn world can know someone cares enough to leave them there. When all is said and done, you are actually not as cruel as you could be. At the very bottom of it all, you _care.__ _

__Which you hate._ _

__+++_ _

__The first time you ever fucked was the result of an argument gone significantly better than it could have. You don’t remember how it happened, other than –_ _

___“You’re ripping me off.”_  
“You don’t need the extra. You get tips.”  
“This ain’t my paycheck.”  
“Be happy you got that.” 

__or something to that effect._ _

__How it began was with him pacing around your office, making everything reek like his bargain-bin perfumey garbage, but somehow it ended with the two of you sharing your imitation-leather chair, the one with the broken arm and relentless capacity for squealing like car tires with any sudden movements, and really the only resemblance between the fight’s beginning and its abrupt conclusion was how he’d asked you for more to begin with and at some point, you remember, he’d asked the same damn thing in your lap._ _

__The second time you agreed. That’s the difference._ _

__You’d never fucked around with a guy, really, but you’d jacked off before, and was it really even conceivable for someone to get off that goddamn fast from hand action and a little bit of dirty talk?_ _

__Yes, apparently._ _

__(He’s gotten better.)_ _

__+++_ _

__You’re sure Eridan works hard to look nice. Knows it, really._ _

__It’s all a waste because when he’s put together and polished, he’s passable for attractive and that, really, is it. Could be that you’re biased. That’s probably a lot of it. He’s such a royal bitch when he’s dressed nice, and from what you can tell the more solid his eyeliner, the more solid the stick jammed up his ass. Given a choice, you much prefer him undone._ _

__At this moment, you have Eridan between your knees – legs splayed out a little slovenly, and you sometimes can’t believe he hadn’t opened his proposal for work with undertones of sexual favors, because to put it bluntly he could really get away with a lot if he did. This, you’ve done enough times to know; you are not his first. Can’t be. Couldn’t be. Don’t care._ _

__Yeah, you don’t care about any of that._ _

__“Stop being such a tease, babydoll,” you tell him, and you give the curly locks in your fist a nice hard tug. He glares up at you curtly._ _

__“Just for that,” – he rescinds his hand, which had almost been touching your cock – “I’m puttin’ on a new coat.”_ _

__Nooooooo._ _

__“Don’t you dare,” you tell him, but it’s a moot point. With your dick out and achingly hard, with the desire to say _fuck it_ and jerk yourself without this moody, temperamental, flaming bitch getting in the way of you getting off – you instead just stare at him, as he deliberately drags the tube across his lips, smearing them bright fuchsia._ _

__“You’re gonna ruin that anyway,” you tell him, since he is._ _

__He doesn’t disagree, really. He does kind of scoff, silently, giving you a look as he pumps your dick with his nice manicured hand._ _

__You hate that you moan for him because – come now._ _

__All of this bullshit is worth it once Eridan is actually blowing you – as always, once, he cuts to the damn chase, it’s worth it. Always. Always._ _

__He licks the underside of your cock and you pull his hair harder than you mean to, not even maliciously, just out of habit. His hands are always rather cold, but you’re sure you don’t mind, his hand wrapped around the base and not moving so much as squeezing, his stupid perfect lips around the head. His tongue flicks across the slit and you almost _cry._ Which you hate. Sort of. Not really. _ _

__He pulls away – pauses, really – and you can tell he’s looking at his lipstick all over your cock, the way he always does, like he thinks it won’t happen every fucking time._ _

__“Baby,” you tell him, almost like you’re begging._ _

__This is when you hate him._ _

__You hate how he breaks you; hate how he bends you. You hate how he reduces you to this kind of mindlessness and it isn’t even just by having your dick sucked, it’s the fact that it’s him. He’s so perfectly coiffed, so put together, until it’s just you two and here he is sucking you off. He looks like a low-budget porno. Grainy and hastily put together. Sometimes sirens sound outside. You think you hear music from the flat next door, even at this goddamn hour, but you aren’t sure, so you lean back on the couch and pull on his hair some more._ _

__He doesn’t even reach down to touch himself – knows you’ll basically do it for him – and the thought of him as desperate and falling apart is more or less what pushes you over the edge. He kind of pulls away (doesn’t like you enough to swallow, at least not this time) but you aren’t even really watching, you just feel the sudden lack of the warmth of his mouth. He is there. He is gone._ _

__You open your eyes and he’s licking it off his fingers like some kind of porn-star. From the way he too-casually glances at you, you think you were meant to be scandalized._ _

__“That’s hot, sweetheart,” you tell him._ _

__He shrugs. It’s a practiced kind of nonchalant._ _

__His lipstick is _fucked._ _ _

__+++_ _

__Occasionally the two of you arrange to meet in this hotel between the Black Lagoon and his apartment known as Siren Inn._ _

__It’s a fetid little building and, realistically, the best either of you can afford. (Where the fuck does he get those pretty dresses? Those nice necklaces? Those pumps? These are questions you don’t want to know the answers to.) You usually meet at midnight, when the Siren is just the Sire, when there’s ‘no occupancy’ illuminated like you’re really meant to believe it. Sure enough, there’s always a room._ _

__When you arrange to meet at The Siren, Eridan is always there first, and there’s never any confusion about what exactly you’re there to do. Maybe you can’t stand him (maybe you’re fond of him) but there’s always some kind of sinning in the scratchy poly-blend sheets._ _

__One time, just as you were accepting the presence of him curled up behind you, he whispered your name into your ear like a question._ _

__“Yeah?” you asked._ _

__“I love you,” he said._ _

__You heart broke, a little bit._ _

__That was (is) the saddest thing you’ve ever heard._ _

__“Don’t,” you’d said._ _

__“I just thought you should know.”_ _

__+++_ _

__It’s always better when you’re the one fucking him up._ _

__You don’t really go down but he never really cares. From your hair-pulling and treatment which vacillates from sugary-sweet to completely fucking terrible, he’s almost always hard by the time you’re taken care of, which makes it all too easy to hoist him up onto your couch and make short work of whatever outfit he’s concocted for the night._ _

__Tonight, it’s easy enough. He’s in some kind of zippered thing that comes off real easy, and he actually begs for you to “get it off already, come on,” which always makes your heart skip a beat whether you want it to or not._ _

__“How bad do you want it?” you ask. This kind of insecure dirty talk is an absolute necessity; you’re sure you don’t really care about the answer, and if he were capable of producing a lie he’d probably do it, but you know better and besides, it’s nice to hear._ _

__“Bad,” he says back. His brow sort of knits when you discard his piece of shit dress in the most careless way possible, throwing it on your floor, but he clearly decides he doesn’t care. “Really bad. Bastard.”_ _

__“C’mon, babe, that’s no way to talk. Be nice. You can be nice.”_ _

__He whines, and if you didn’t know better, you’d say that’s nice enough. He’s so classy; he’s so snarky. Right now, he’s thrusting up into your hand, which is barely touching him._ _

__“C’mon- c’mon, please, I’m-“_ _

__“Please? How polite,” you croon, fake-praising him. “You’re pretty spoiled. I can’t believe I enable you. Fucking brat.” But you grab him tighter, move your hand faster. He might look a lot more pissed off he weren’t so desperate for you. You rub your thumb across the damp hand. God. What a wretched display._ _

__He’s beautiful._ _

__You decide to tell him._ _

__“Guess what?” You don’t wait for him to guess. “You’re beautiful.” He looks like he might punch you, but that’s no matter – in fact, you’re pretty sure he couldn’t even if he wanted to._ _

__You think he wants to start insulting you, but he – well, he can’t, can he now?_ _

__This is why you truly like fucking him (fucking with him). While Eridan is able to best you when you’re tending bar and he’s tending to customers; while he is intelligent and thinks on his feet; while you might even be inclined to say you are evenly matched, this is one of those times when you seize the upper hand._ _

__“What’s the matter, baby? Cat got your tongue?”_ _

__You have stolen your words back._ _

__+++_ _

__You watch him get dressed and it’s almost voyeuristic, only you aren’t really getting off, per se. It’s more like an enjoyment derived from seeing him, face all red, hair all messed up with the product pushed out, as he tries to recreate that look of glam-rock grace in this state of blatant disheveled. Eridan looks like he’s embezzling some kind of beauty queen most of the time, like he’s on borrowed time, but in the dim lighting of your office as he steps shakily into his heels, he’s so ruined you think you might even like him._ _

__“You almost ready?” you ask him. He looks at you curtly._ _

__“I can walk home myself.”_ _

__“Don’t,” you tell him._ _

__“I just thought you should know.”_ _

__You walk him home even though you’d rather be doing a million other things, because as everyone knows his neighborhood is just not safe for a girl at this time of night, let alone your _best_ girl. What a liability that would be. _ _

__You don’t speak a lot. Don’t really have to. You walk with your hand on the small of his back, like you’re a real couple, mostly because it looks better and also because you feel as if you should. Maybe you owe him that much. Maybe not. You aren’t sure._ _

__You’re almost lonely in the moonlight after dropping him off._ _

__All things considered, you really can’t wait to hate him again._ _

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this at about 2 am and now it's 4 am and i don't know what i'm doing hhhh hh h
> 
> im sorry if you're offended by eridan wearing dresses and being called names
> 
> i promise he likes it
> 
> also i pretty much dedicate this to andy and she knows what she did


End file.
